Custom Properties

[Richard Gaskin]

Devin Asay wrote:
> I had the same reaction when I finally "got" custom properties. My  
> favorite recent discovery is the setProp structure. Any time some  
> obscure handler in my project changes a property's value all I have  
> to do is include a setProp structure to tell my stack what's supposed  
> to happen. So often we HyperCard refugees have long-ingrained habits  
> for working around issues, and all of a sudden we discover extremely  
> powerful elements of Transcript... that transform our scripting lives.

Many years ago I had a client who'd seen the HyperCard Instance 
Variables stack made by an Apple employee, and hired me to make him a 
toolkit for maintaining those sorts of pseudo-properties, along with 
pseudo-groups, and other Rev-like things. I tried to tell him I could 
save him a lot of money if he'd just fire me and buy a copy of Rev.  He 
insisted, we did what we did, and while it worked I always felt odd 
about working so hard to craft workarounds for stuff that was already 
available more efficiently and more cost-effectively.

My favorite thing about custom props is that they let me use stack files 
for general data storage -- I can have multi-part data, even 
hierarchically-ordered data, and it all flies so darned efficiently:

<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2002-July/006149.html>


--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
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  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com